The Republican leadership was forced to abandon a vote on its alternative plan
to avoid the "fiscal cliff" on Thursday night after its members
rebelled at the prospect of raising taxes for millionaires.

In a humiliating blow to the authority of John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, Republican members of Congress made clear they would reject his "Plan B" because it included proposals for a tax rise on those making more than $1 million a year.

"The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass," Mr Boehner said in a statement after the vote was called off minutes before it was due to go to the floor.

Mr Boehner had presented his plan as a set of conservative measures to prevent taxes from going up on every American family in the event that negotiations with the White House broke down and no deal could be reached to avert the "cliff".

His proposals would have limited tax rises to only those making more than $1 million and shifted the pain of spending cuts to from the military budget onto domestic programmes cherished by Democrats.

But while Republicans narrowly approved his spending measures, enough balked at the tax rises to force him to call off the vote on Thursday night.

The White House had already made clear that it would veto the bill if it ever cleared Congress, but the chaotic late-night episode will weaken Mr Boehner's hand as he returns to the negotiating table with Barack Obama.

It also illustrated the difficult position the Speaker finds himself in: caught between a Democratic president demanding higher taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year and members of a Republican caucus that are implacably opposed to tax rises of any kind.

The collapse of the "Plan B" means that direct negotiations between Mr Obama and Mr Boehner are now the only hope for averting the $600 billion in tax rises and automatic spending cuts due to begin in less than two weeks.

The White House declined to gloat over Mr Boehner's defeat last night, issuing a brief statement calling for a return to negotiations and "a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy".

Earlier in the day, Mr Boehner said Mr Obama had failed to honour a promise to offer substantial spending cuts and welfare reforms in exchange for the Republican agreeing to tax rates in any form.

"For weeks the White House said if I moved on rates, that they would make substantial concessions on spending cuts and entitlement reform,” Mr Boehner said. “I did my part, they’ve done nothing.”